For the last 20 years, Bruce Crabtree has been the driving force in addressing childhood hunger for the Boys and Girls Club of the Tennessee Valley (BGCTNV). Although his title as the Director of Childcare Compliance doesn’t quite tell the whole story of his efforts, Bruce has coordinated the 20 club sites in four of the East Tennessee counties, ensuring their afterschool and summer meals programs are run smoothly and in accordance with the USDA regulations for food safety. In 2020, the BGCTNV served close to 6,700 youth, ages 5-18.

Bruce is known for seeing a need and meeting it.  During the last several years, Bruce noticed that students were coming to the summer meal sites hungry in the morning. Due to the current Summer Food Service regulations, sites could only serve 2 meals per day, either lunch and snack or breakfast and lunch, where kids would typically be hungry for at least one other meal. Bruce took it upon himself to coordinate a third meal at the sites through grants, donations and foundation funding.

Before COVID hit, Bruce was also noticing that children and families were leaving the clubs on Fridays and not knowing where their weekend meals would come from. Bruce connected with the Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee to become involved in their Food Rescue Program. After joining, Bruce and team were able to get calls from local stores and restaurants to pick up food that otherwise would not have sold to be able to offer in the Club’s food pantry for families.

The Boys and Girls Clubs are havens for youth and teens, so they are always changing and modifying to meet the needs of their youth. Bruce noticed that they needed to re-engage their teens so he decided to host a focus group to understand what meals and foods they would like to see served at the clubs. After completing the focus groups, Bruce reached out to the meal vendors to customize the menu to things the teens were interested in eating, making it easier to keep them coming back each day to learn and grow together.

When asked, the President and CEO, Bart McFadden shared these thoughts about Bruce and the impact he has on the community he serves, ‘Bruce lives his life daily to meet the needs of kids. Through his tireless work and willingness to go many extra miles, kids served by our organization have their basic needs met so that the power of our programs can have their greatest impact. While much of his work is unseen by the kids and public, thousands of kids and families in our region are blessed by Bruce and we are blessed he is on our team.’

This May, through the efforts of Bruce and his team, the BGCTNV received a grant from No Kid Hungry Tennessee to help fill in the gaps in meal service, as well as a new-to-them box truck with a lift to continue their food rescue mission to serve their community.